The Pork Filled Players rather optimistically suggest allowing 15 to 20 minutes to find parking outside the Northwest Actors Studio (NWAS). After spending some 45 minutes wandering around the Pike/Pine corridor on a wet Friday night, I returned to home and resolved to see their latest production another night.
I've loved this troupe of Asian-American actors since they first started popping up in fringe festivals and late-night cabarets back in the 1990s. Fast, sassy and often with a lot of say hidden under their punchlines, they launched a whole tribe of Asian-American actors onto the Seattle scene. Such actors are often underutilized and ignored, but that's another story.
So when artistic director Roger Tang announced that the company was heading into new territory, presenting a fully-scripted evening of comedy/drama, I wanted to be there.
The next night the traffic was only half the Friday nightmare and I wisely slid my car into place around 5:30 p.m., window-shopped my way down Pike, had a slow dinner and returned to NWAS with plenty of time to see "Big Hunk O' Burnin' Love."
If you live within walking distance of NWAS or have better parking karma than me, this is a pleasant two-hours of romantic comedy oddly tarred with a little drama.
Like the sketch comedy the troupe regularly performs, "Big Hunk O' Burnin' Love" chops its scenes down into tiny chunks (10 scenes in the first one-hour act, eight in the second act of equal length). With lots of blackouts to cover the one piece of furniture on stage with various drapes, the actors are never on stage for more than 10 minutes at a time and are often alone, addressing the audience in a series of monologues that would make great audition pieces. The pacing gives the whole play a bit of an improv comedy feel, even though the actors stay in character all night long.
Jose Abaoag flashes a beautiful smile and looks at least a decade younger than the supposedly 29-turning-30 Winston. Doomed by a family curse to spontaneously combust if he doesn't marry by age 30, the Thai-American Winston struggles throughout the play with his fear of commitment, briefly considering marrying a "fresh off the boat" Thai teenager while flirting with the white wife of his best friend, a Chinese-American gynecologist.
As the gynecologist friend Nick, Christian Ver (a PFP veteran) gets some of the best lines and the worst costumes on the stage. Why the well-to-do Nick, a professional rocketing up in his career, spends all his time in a droopy white sweater remains one of those mysteries of fringe theater. Although playing a guy who is supposedly more sophisticated than Winston (if equally clueless about love), as well as much more economically secure in his world, Ver looked like an underpaid undergraduate for most of the evening.
Better served in the wardrobe department and probably having the most fun of the evening, Daniel Arreola as Winston's father and Leilani Berinobis as his mother form the compassionate core of the play. While the other characters call them the "eccentrics" for wanting their child to marry and live happily, who wouldn't sympathize with a pair of parents trying to save their son from bursting into flames?
As the racetrack-loving Dad, Arreola conveys the universal frustration of fathers faced with a son who really doesn't want to grow up and get a "real" job (Winston works temp jobs while auditioning for TV shows). Berinobis steals every scene that she is in, whether plotting with Noi (Elizabeth Daruthayan) about how to get Winston married or demonstrating the "Clapper" that she's just installed in their house.
Noi arrives in Winston's home with equally ambivalent feelings about the marriage arranged by his parents and a boyfriend back in Thailand. Since supratitles haven't made it into American theater, she delivers her "Thai" monologue in English, catching up the audience on her own troubles of the heart before disappearing under the two-word sentences that she uses to communicate with Winston.
Trapped in the most thankless role, Kellen Kaiser is Nick's wife, Winston's former love interest and a 20-something woman newly diagnosed with breast cancer. That's a lot of baggage for the only white girl in the production! Kaiser tries valiantly to turn a plot device into a human being, but she's stuck with long periods of looking like she drank sour milk while everyone around her pontificates.
While the play concentrates on Winston and his ambivalence about marriage Thai style, playwright Prince Gomolvilas has a nice light touch and an appealing plot reminiscent of the "Sex in Seattle" episodes. Back in 1998, when this play premiered, it may have felt off the wall or even unusual in its depiction of Thai-American home life. It's only when Gomolvilas ventures into gynecology, mammograms and white girls' attraction to Asian guys that the plot and the dialogue feels a little forced.
In his program notes, director Miko Premo said he picked this work for the PFP's inaugural non-sketch show because it was about "the universal problem of defining who one is in the face of race, gender, familial obligation and a modernistic society."
Tang's notes revealed that he wanted to bring Gomolvilas' work to the Seattle stage. Looking over the synopsis of later Gomolvilas plays, the later, quirkier works by this prolific playwright seems an even better fit for his troupe.
For now, this featherweight play makes for a pleasant two hours of entertainment for longtime Pork Filled Player fans or "Sex in Seattle" aficionados who can't wait for the June episode. But, for the biggest laughs or to introduce your friends to the delights of this talented group, save your bucks for their October sketch show.
"Big Hunk O' Burnin' Love" runs through March 24 on Friday and Saturday nights, 8 p.m., at the Northwest Actors Studio, 1100 E. Pike St. Tickets are $14 at the door or $10 for students/seniors.
Rosemary Jones writes about arts and entertainment and can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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